Social Justice and Video: Imagining as a Right in Vancouver's Downtown Eastside

Abstract

In this chapter I want to examine the relationship between the right to the city, social justice and video, using as an example a short film Wishlist which I co-produced in Vancouver, Canada, in 2006. Wishlist was one of a trio of short films made in the Spring of 2006, originally conceived as a participatory video project that focused on a particular street in the Downtown Eastside (DTES) of Vancouver. Carrall Street was at that time the subject of a design project by the City of Vancouver and it was the film-makers’ collective intention to experiment with the use of video as a way of eliciting residents’ desires for this pivotal street which connects different parts of the downtown area (see Maps 7.1 and 7.2). The purpose of Wishlist was twofold. First, we wanted to engage people in a dialogue about how they see themselves and their neighbourhood. Second, we wanted to be able to convey this vision to City of Vancouver planners, in the hope of affecting decisions made about the street. So Wishlist was intended both as an action research project and as a vehicle for reflecting on the potential of video in contributing to social justice in the planning of the city.